{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/newsroom-news-releases-barrasso-americans-are-struggling-biden-harris-policies-are-to-blame/", "Barrasso: Americans are struggling. Biden-Harris policies are to blame.", "2024-09-11", "2024", "2024-09", "Republican", "Senate", "WY", "John Barrasso", "B001261", "www.barrasso.senate.gov", "barrasso", "https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/newsroom/news-releases/", "scraper", "\u201cMonth after month, year after year, Americans watch their costs go up and their savings go down\u2026 Americans cannot afford four more years of failure. Americans need a break from the damaging policies of Vice President Harris.\u201d\n\nClick here to watch Senator Barrasso\u2019s full remarks.\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, spoke today on the Senate floor about the economic nightmare caused by the policies of the Biden-Harris administration. Under the Biden-Harris administration, prices have risen over 20 percent, making life unaffordable for hardworking American families. Senate Republicans have solutions to make life more affordable and to unleash American energy.\n\nSenator Barrasso\u2019s Remarks:\n\n\u201cI come to the Floor today to discuss the need to get our Nation and our Economy back on track.\n\n\u201cWe learned the morning, new number have come out on inflation, prices are higher today than they were the day that the Biden-Harris administration took over by over 20 percent.\n\n\u201cI hear about in Wyoming every weekend. I heard about it this past weekend, how high prices have become and the crushing effect that has had on families in my state of Wyoming and all around the country.\n\n\u201cThis has been going on now for over three years. Prices have continued to go up.\n\n\u201cAnd this crisis of high prices has been cumulative. The impact on families has been cumulative. It is regrettably causing very hard choices for families to make. It shouldn\u2019t be this way.\n\n\u201cHere is a recent headline from CBS News: \u2018More Americans are having to choose between food and energy bills.\u2019 Clearly this is a reflection on the Biden-Harris administration.\n\n\u201cOne of the folks who talked about that was Stacy Freedman. Mrs. Freedman says her energy bills each month cost her hundreds of dollars. As she told CBS News, \u2018sometimes I have to choose whether I\u2019m going to pay the light bill\u201d or \u201cpay all the rent or buy food or not let my son\u2019 participate in a sport.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what happened under the Biden-Harris administration. The impact of the high prices caused by the massive amounts of government spending\u2014passed without a single Republican vote\u2014 stimulated an amount of increase in prices, the highest in 40 years.\n\n\u201cMrs. Freedman\u2019s story is sadly all too common.\n\n\u201cMany Americans know are feeling the high cost and the high anxiety related to the high cost of goods and services in their lives. Nearly 4 out 10, 2 out of 5, Americans say they worry about their ability to pay their own bills.\n\n\u201cSince 2019, utilities cost the average American almost $300 more each month. Not $300 a month, $300 more each month from what they were paying before.\n\n\u201cThese are the costly and cumulative consequences of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris\u2019s war on affordable and reliable American energy.\n\n\u201cMr. President, if you ask people around the country, they know that this is an administration who has strongly come out against American energy.\n\n\u201cThey froze federal oil and gas leases. They discouraged new energy production. They issued regulations to ban gas-powered vehicles \u2013 the kind of vehicles most Americans drive.\n\n\u201cSo, it\u2019s not a surprise that high energy prices continue to bother and cause pain for families.\n\n\u201cMonth after month, year after year, Americans watch their costs go up and regrettably see their savings\u2014if they have savings\u2014go down.\n\n\u201cThe Biden-Harris administration has offered no solutions to our nation\u2019s cost of living crisis.\n\n\u201cDemocrats instead tell Americans not to believe the price tags at the grocery stores or the price at the gas pump. They want you to believe everything is okay. Americans know that isn\u2019t so.\n\n\u201cWe learned last month that the Bureau of Labor Statistics \u2013 which is supposed to keep accurate unemployment data \u2013 well they reported faulty numbers. A million jobs, touted by the Biden-Harris administration, do not actually exist.\n\n\u201cThey never existed. They were never created. Yet the Biden-Harris administration claimed credit for jobs that do not exist.\n\n\u201cMeanwhile, we\u2019ve had two straight months where job growth was lower than expected.\n\n\u201cAmerica today has fewer manufacturing jobs than we did last year.\n\n\u201cIn Michigan, autoworkers are getting laid off.\n\n\u201cLast month, the carmaker Stellantis announced plans to lay off more than 2,000 American workers from its plants in Detroit.\n\n\u201cThis is the same carmaker that received hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies \u2013 a tidal wave of electric vehicle grants from the Biden-Harris administration. And they\u2019re laying off people. Take the money from the government \u2013 from the Biden Administration from the Harris administration \u2013 and lay off workers.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s no surprise that last night in the debate Kamala Harris couldn\u2019t even answer the first question when asked \u201cAre you better off now than you were 4 years ago.\u201d Are you American people better off now than they were 4 years ago?\n\n\u201cShe could not defend herself. She could not say yes. Because people are not better off now than they were 4 years ago.\n\n\u201cThese recent layoffs come as they switch their assembly lines from gas-powered vehicles to electric vehicles.\n\n\u201cThousands of American workers soon to be put in the unemployment line as a result to what Harris and Biden and the Democrats are continuing to promote.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 regulations, Democrats\u2019 rhetoric of impending climate doom are crushing American jobs.\n\n\u201cIt is no wonder that Biden and Harris are now running from their record, and it is a record of ruin for the economy.\n\n\u201cThe flip flops, the walk backs, and the cover ups are all too apparent.\n\n\u201cThe American people know the policies of Vice President Harris had a chilling impact on our American economy.\n\n\u201cWhen then-Senator Harris was rated the most liberal member of the United States Senate, Americans listened.\n\n\u201cWhen Vice President Harris said recently that her values have not changed, people listened again.\n\n\u201cAmericans are struggling. Biden-Harris policies, and the Democrat polices, are to blame.\n\n\u201cRemember how we got here. Democrats passed trillions of dollars in reckless, radical, runaway spending.\n\n\u201cIt was so unpopular\u2014not a single Republican voted for it\u2014 it had to pass with a tie-breaking vote.\n\n\u201cAnd who broke the vote? Well, the Vice President of the United States, comes to the Senate to pass the tie-breaking vote and that would be Kamala Harris. Now the Democrat candidate for President of the United States.\n\n\u201cVice President Harris came to this chamber and sat in that chair and cast the vote that broke the tie that brought us record-high inflation. 40-year high inflation.\n\n\u201cAmericans cannot afford four more years of failure.\n\n\u201cAmericans need a break from the damaging policies of Vice President Harris.\n\n\u201cWhat Harris is proposing is more wasteful, Washington spending. Harris wants to raise taxes on the middle class, and impose socialist-style price controls.\n\n\u201cShe supports banning fracking. She supports banning gas-powered vehicles. She wants to make energy more expensive.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s how she\u2019s voted. That\u2019s how her rhetoric has been. And as she\u2019s said, her values haven\u2019t changed.\n\n\u201cVice President Harris would continue the nightmare of high prices and high taxes.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s remember, it was different three and a half years ago under the Trump administration.\n\n\u201cBack then, paychecks were going up. Inflation was nonexistent. Americans were breaking free of poverty. America was energy dominant. Our Southern border was safe and secure. Not anymore.\n\n\u201cPeople want go back to those days of American prosperity again.\n\n\u201cSo, it is time to turn the page from the disastrous policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.\n\n\u201cRepublicans will work to lower prices, to unleash American energy, and to get this nation back on track.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:46:43Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/newsroom-news-releases-barrasso-americans-are-struggling-biden-harris-policies-are-to-blame/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5812348574399948, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}